Stones With Words

Author's Note-  I started with a way longer journal response, but I shortened it down to this. At the beginning it was more of a list of things that relate to stones. Stones or writing on stones can have a lot of meaning behind it, like that it cant be erased, except for over time, when it is forgotten.

I Am Turtle

Author's Note: It was a response to The Bean Trees. It wasn't an essay so I thought it deserved to be on the main blog, instead of with the other essay responses. The little girl, Turtle, seemed like such a basic idea, that anyone can relate to.  If you look at anything at different ways, you can get a lot of it from it, was one of the main ideas I wanted to say.

My first word was bean,
Maybe to mean

I am a seed,

And I need your help to grow

I need your light, your soil, your warmth.

I am like a shadow in the desert

Nothing to hide me,
Nothing to protect me,
There’s life unfolding all around me
Everything is amber and dry,
Filled with hate

Still the cactuses grow
Covered in thorns
A hint of green,
In the sea of brown
You cant expect something
pretty, to grow here,
From a cracked base like this.
But sometimes

Sometimes…
A flower will find the will
To grow on top of the thorns
To grow on top of the hate
To cover it up
To try to pretend the whole plant is beautiful

Sometimes…
A flower will find the will
To keep living, even though
It only opens just once
To flourish for its moment then
It leaves us again

I realized that I had come to my own terms with the desert, but, my soul was thirsty.

My full name is April Turtle Greer

April to mean
In spring,
In hope,
As a seed, my time to blossom into a tree

Turtle to mean
I am my own animal,
I can hide.
If I go into my shell,
Ill have to come back out eventually

Greer to mean
I am officially someone,
I belong to something,
I finally matter again.

My second word was Humbean
Maybe to mean
I am not yet,
The something I want to be.
I am part hum and part bean, and together it makes me

Maybe everything is more coherent
Maybe I can be more than one thing
Maybe Ma is my new soil, my new light, my new warmth.

MY Goals!

Author's Note: To show what I need to work on, to remind myself what I am working towards. Thats what I have goals for.

LEAVES!

Author's Note: I was remembering back to when I was little, and when we could spend hours just jumping in leaves, and how pretty everything is. I feel like we always forget.

Writing Is...

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Project

Author's Note: My group and I tried to make a tree, for a project from the book A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. This is just what it looked like, and how we made it. We made a tree out of cardboard boxes. We drew the cube design on the boxes and then cut it out and taped it together. After that we painted the boxes green jeweled them to make it sparkle and look cool! (sparkle for hope I guess) Also we put a yellow star wrapped in string on top to represent hope and you CAN get there. Then on the 3rd level of boxes we put a whole bunch of important quotes, to tie the whole book together. Its a Christmas Tree so it has a tree skirt. On our tree skirt we drew/painted pics or scenes on it. We also got some help from Morgan Patterson, Elli Ramlow, and Alyssa Meka!

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Project-By: katelyn, allison, natalie, erin